Considering Tane dressed while having twelve guns and twenty-four human eyes trained on him, he felt very relaxed.

He didn’t even think about shifting when a soldier barked at Kinyi to hurry up as she pulled on her last shoe. The fact that all these men and women had seen her entirely naked pissed him off a good bit, and he wanted to kill every single one of them for that alone, but he had his Draqon completely under control.

For the first time in his life.

He wasn’t completely positive, but he thought it had something to do with how he’d connected with Kinyi during sex so completely that he’d felt her emotions as if they were his own. It had been a long time since he’d been home, but he knew what that connection meant. He didn’t need to be fresh off Kladuu to know what a true rider should feel like.

He took Kinyi’s hand to a lot of barking and yelling from the soldiers. “Calm down,” Tane told them. “You have your guns on us. Clearly, we don’t have any weapons since you just watched us dress. So just chill out.”

Kinyi snorted as she held back a laugh. “This shouldn’t be so funny,” she muttered.

“They did catch us with our pants down.”

“Stop talking! Put your hands on your head.”

With a sigh, Tane did as he was told. The soldiers circled around them, and a brave few came close enough to put him and Kinyi in skinwrap cuffs that were tight enough to make his fingers tingle.

A soldier nudged him with a gun between his shoulder blades. “Walk forward.”

Kinyi fell into step beside him as they worked their way out of the cargo hold with the soldiers around them. He should have felt something other than the happy afterglow from sex with Kinyi, but he didn’t. It wasn’t like Kinyi’s mission was ruined. The battleship could hardly turn around for two stowaways. They would have to escape once the ship landed on Kladuu—and, of course, there was still the fact that he was going home, but he didn’t see that as much of an issue either.

Kinyi bumped his shoulder with her own. “At least they had the courtesy to wait until we’d finished.”

“No talking!” a soldier barked from behind them, and Tane got another stab between his shoulder blades with the gun.

Kinyi snaked around to glare at the soldiers. “Touch my mate with that thing one more time and I’ll shove it down your throat.”

“Face forward! Keep walking!”

When she turned around, Tane met her glance with raised eyebrows. He hoped his expression didn’t reveal the swoops and dips in his gut. “Mate, huh?”

She smirked. “Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“You know you can never ride me,” he said, his voice low. “You deserve a better male. One who isn’t broken.”

She glanced up at him, her ice-blue eyes searching his face. What would he do if she agreed? What would he do if she didn’t? Worry and fear chased each other in his mind, but right in the center was an unfaltering sense of rightness. Even if he could never fly with her, Kinyi was his mate.

As if she’d read his thoughts, she said, “There’s more than one way to ride you.”

“If either of you speaks again, we will shoot you.”

“Whatever.” Kinyi rolled her eyes.

They were herding them up a steep set of metal stairs to a level higher in the ship. The brig consisted of a few narrow, low-ceiling cells in the heart of the ship next to the engine room. The racket was deafening, and it reeked of fuel.

The soldiers prodded them into one cell barely big enough for one in-ground latrine and a narrow cot. The door slammed shut and locked.

“The captain will be down to question you as soon as we land. She’ll be a little busy until then,” a soldier said. He studied them for a moment longer before adding, “I don’t know why the hell you chose to stowaway on this ship, but you two fucked up. This won’t be some vacation. You’re going into a war zone.”

The other soldiers laughed before leaving the brig.

Kinyi lowered herself to the ground and stretched her legs out in front of her as much as she could. Tane settled beside her, their shoulders touching, their bodies still humming with warmth. His scent coated her skin, making him almost deliriously happy.

“Should we talk more about this ‘mate’ thing?”

Kinyi leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “What’s there to talk about? Seems simple to me.”

“Is everything black and white to you?”

She frowned and cracked open an eyelid to squint at him. “Of course not. I’m not color blind.”

“It’s a human expression.”

“It’s a stupid one.”

He would have rubbed his temples had his hands been free. “Maybe we should focus on escaping. I’d hate to ruin our honeymoon stage by arguing.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have spent so much time on Earth. Just think, had you stayed on Kladuu, we could have found each other so much sooner.”

He grinned at her. “Everything happens for a reason.”

“Right. I just had a few extra years to sleep around with all the attractive unmated males.”

His smile slipped off his face. “That isn’t funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be. Now, get these off.”

She wiggled into position in front of him with her ass practically in his lap and her wrists as high up her back as she could manage. She bent forward at the waist and glanced over her shoulder. “Quit staring at my ass and bite the cuffs off.”

He pulled his gaze away from her perfectly muscular backside and blinked at her. “I can’t just bite them off. They’re skinwraps. It’ll take your flesh with it.”

“You’ll have to partially shift. Your teeth will be sharp enough then.”

He shook his head. “Hell no. I can’t—”

“I’ve seen you get close to a partial shift numerous times when I smelled your madness, Tane,” Kinyi snapped, growing impatient. She shifted in the narrow cell so her shoulder was braced against the cell door. “You’ll be fine.”

“I could shift completely by accident and burn you.”

“I trust you. Hurry up and bite me.”

She shouldn’t trust him. It blew his mind that she would even consider it after learning the truth about what happened during the Arakid battle on Kladuu. The madness might have been outside his control, but at his very core, he remained a killer. And she wanted to be with him. She had called him her mate. She trusted him to partially shift while locked in a tight space with him, knowing he couldn’t control his Draqon.

His ice queen was incredibly brave, and he didn’t deserve her.

“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” she said. She sat back up and twisted around to face him.

He stared down at the place where their bent knees touched. She leaned forward and found his gaze.

He smiled softly at her. “What am I thinking?”

“That you’ve done a bad thing.”

“I did a horrible thing.”

“So, you should punish yourself for the rest of your life?”

His smile crumbled. “That’s easy for you to say, but you don’t bear the deaths of your people on your conscience. I should punish myself.”

She leaned back against the bars like she was settling in for a fireside chat. “I did a bad thing once. Granted, no one died, but at the time, I kind of hoped the person would.”

Tane frowned. “I doubt that. You would never hurt a Draqon.”

“Well,” Kinyi said, drawing out the word, “she’s human, and a really annoying one at that.”

He’d laughed before he could stop himself. Already, she had him smiling again. “How so?”

“You know the type. Curvy but still tiny. Perfectly proportionate. Stunningly beautiful. And damaged in all the right ways that are tragic but not scary, sexy but not too sad.”

“Ah,” Tane said. “The Disney princess type.”

“I don’t know what kind of princess that is, but your new Queen’s name is Niva. So, don’t hate her too much.”

His mouth fell open. “You tried to kill the Queen?”

“She wasn’t the Queen at the time! And technically, I just left her in the woods for the Skax to munch on during the roosting season.”

“That’s trying to kill her. Baby Skax are as deadly as a rutting Katu.”

Kinyi waved off his words like a bad smell in the air. “Whatever. The point is, I felt bad afterward. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone that, so if you repeat those words to anyone, I’ll kill you myself, but I did feel bad.”

“How is this supposed to help me?”

“We’ve all done bad shit. But in that moment right before we take our last breath in this world, do you want to be beating yourself up over that one bad thing? Or are you going to ask yourself if you did enough to make up for that bad thing? If your good outweighs your bad?”

He frowned. “I’m not a good enough person to do anywhere near enough to make up for what happened during that battle. I’m not sure there is enough.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not. But maybe if you try, the trying itself will be what matters.”

He considered her words for a long moment. He didn’t see how it could ever work, and during his last breath, he imagined he would relive the moment he’d lost control on the battlefield in an eternal loop, but part of him wanted to believe her.

“So, what will it be?” she prodded when the silence had gone on too long.

He cocked his head and studied her. “I didn’t take you for the pep talk type.”

“Don’t get used to it,” she warned. “I hate that shit. It makes me feel too nice.”

He laughed deep into his belly. It felt good. And even though they were flying straight for the one place he’d sworn to never go again, there wasn’t anywhere else he wanted to be.

“Now, don’t make me ask you again,” she said. She turned back around and shoved her hands in his face, settling her ass right on his crotch. “Bite me.”